While I was halfway through
this ultra-zoological survey, during the spring of 1969, the showman, Frank
Hansen of U.S.A., produced a mystery creature a dead one. Hansen stated
that the mysterious hairy body had been found preserved in a lump of ice
in the Bering Straits. On a subsequent occasion came a statement that the
specimen had been bought in Hong Kong, with no reason given for this contradiction
in terms.

Doctor Bernard Heuvelmans, the
Belgian scientist, and author-scientist Ivan Sanderson examined the remains
through glass. Other scientists were alerted, among them Dr John Napier
who had taken part in the Californian Bigfoot television documentary some
time earlier. Once more since the Bigfoot incident (which will figure
in a later chapter) anthropologists were faced with a problem. Was the
somewhat apelike, hirsute, ice-encased specimen, which showed signs of
modem injury, a sample of prehistory as claimed at first by the showman,
and how had it got into the ice? Was this a hoax, or was it crime?

America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) was alleged to be watching. Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans
pressed on in their enquiries, and some very curious facts came to light.
For a start, Heuvelmans had written a paper on the case for the Bulletin
of the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium, several months
before the mystery of the "Iceman" became more known. He called
his thesis "Preliminary Note on a Specimen preserved in the ice;
an unknown Living hominid" and I suggest that by the term "living" Dr Heuvelmans means a specimen that could be equated with a currently
recognized type of man.

American opinion does not consider
this specimen entirely an Abominable Snowman type, though this is open
to query.

The feature which amazes the
investigators is that this thing from the ice has been on exhibition in
carnivals and fairs for two years, during which thousands of people have
seen it, paying twenty-five cents for the viewing, but nobody, save one
person questioned its nature.

The notice against its showcase
stated: Possibly a mediaeval man left over from the ice age. Note the
contradictory terms, which show a definite lack of interest in accuracy.

Hansen asked Doctor Heuvelmans
and Ivan Sanderson to keep quiet on whatever it was they discovered about
the specimen until the owner gave permission for them to speak out. The
owner was supposed to be a prominent and eccentric rich man living in
California. Heuvelmans, and Sanderson would not promise, and, according
to Sanderson, the owner, or owners, of the Iceman refused to answer any
questions on its origin and history.

In spite of their non-cooperation,
Heuvelmans circulated his thesis among leading anthropologists. All agreed
that the specimen was an authentic type of man. What type?

It was then that the matter was
referred to the American authorities. They put the same question to Hansen,
who was probably the person who had first leaked the news of the Iceman's
discovery. Again he refused to reply. But when these official enquiries
began, the owner came to Minnesota where his "property" lay
in storage, and took it away in a refrigerated truck. He left behind a
sort of duplicate of the figure made out of wax.

The reason for official alerting
was because by now suspicions were aroused. In all probability the Iceman
might have been a human primitive whom someone had confronted in one of
the wildest parts of the American mountains. The mystery of the whole
affair might have begun just there, as a trick by a person or persons
to dispose of an incriminating corpse. Signs of modern injuries had been
discovered on the remains, and such evidence could indicate such a crime.

Then the investigators found
that the specimen had been hidden for a year, even before its ice-bound
travels around the show-grounds, and that when the eccentric owner first
obtained it he went to great lengths to hide it. Of all the hundreds of
people who saw the specimen when it was on show, there was only one interested
onlooker, Perry Cullen, a herpetologist and naturalist from Milwaukee.
It was he who drew the attention of Sanderson and his colleagues. Sanderson
later stated that when "Bozo", as he nicknamed the Iceman, has
been sorted out, it would be useless to argue against the Darwinian theory.
He made cryptic references to the Old Testament and said that the best
guide to a new understanding of mankind would be to re-read it, preferably
in an edition as near as possible to the original old Hebraic or Aramaic.
If one looked back to "this ancient pragmatic exercise in clear thinking"
one would get an explanation of "just what poor Bozo most likely
is".

Genesis Chapter Six refers to
a race of giants who "married the daughters of men". In the
Hebrew language these giants were known as the "Nephilim", which
means a race of big people. Genesis One in that chapter states: "And
it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,
and daughters were born unto them." Genesis Two continues: "That
the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they
took them wives of all which they chose". And continuing  "There
were giants on the earth in those days, and also after that when the sons
of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown ...."

Could that strange Transatlantic
search for the truth about Bozo be explained by reading between the lines
of these ancient words? Could part of the answer to other human or semi-
human riddles, with which the Iceman mystery might be associated, begin
just here too?

Was the unusual discovery genuine;
was it after all a remnant of pre-history, or some freakishly hirsute
being of the present age that had suffered an extraordinary fate? Or was
this a drifted specimen illustrating the vexed Snowman/Almas question.

Much of Bernard Heuvelman's current
views tally with the first Iceman factors, but there were new and recent
details which justified a re-examination of the case. Perry Cullen alerted
the experts, and the additional factors stemmed from there.

After referring to the fairground
showings for the benefit of a French enquiry, Heuvelmans recalled how
the Iceman [aka Minnesota Iceman] had been allegedly found in the floating
block of ice.

In view of the geographical location
of the find, I have wondered if the creature might perhaps have been of
Ainu origin; a postulation afterwards recorded having been put forward
by one of the scientists interviewed.

French sources stated that a
Soviet ship found the body and was forced to put in at a Chinese port
where their cargo, including the ice-cased specimen was confiscated. Bozo
vanished for several months, to re-appear as a piece of contraband curiosity
in Hong Kong. This was said to be where its anonymous owner had first
acquired it. Mr. Cullen's secretary had tried diligently to discover the
name and address of the unknown purchaser, but failed. The only news available
had been what my own enquiries had extricated, that he had been in Minnesota,
and then disappeared.

It was at this point that Frank
Hansen agreed to see Heuvelmans and Sanderson. The interview took place
on 17 December 1968, producing a variation of information. A different
version of the finding of the Iceman was that Japanese whalers had fished
it out of the sea. Hansen then said that the owner, who had bought Bozo,
was a film tycoon, a Californian traveling around in the East searching
for interesting curios to use for scenic effects.

This man must have been the anonymous
personage whose name Hansen had been enjoined to keep secret, and who
had rewarded him financially for putting the Iceman on show. They were
supposed to have shared the profits of this peep show.

The foregone has a slightly Munchausen
flavor, but one must remember that the unknown Californian was reputed
to be eccentric as well as rich.

Doctor Heuvelmans gave an amplified
description of the icebound thing. It was displayed on a sort of trailer,
this in its turn supporting a huge refrigerated coffin, measuring 2.20
metres (7.2 ft) in length by 20 centimetres (8 in) in width. Fluorescent
tubes lighted from the container within. A large layer of thick glass
acted as lid.

Hansen told Heuvelmans and Sanderson
that the ice block itself at the time of acquisition measured approximately
2.75 metres (9 ft) long, by 1.50 metres (4.9 ft) wide, and 1.20 metres
(3.9 ft) in height. It weighed some 2,700 kilos (5952 lbs). To ensure
the best visibility the ice block had been substantially reduced.

"The specimen resembled
a man, yet, seemed "non-human" because it did not correspond
entirely to man's actual definitions. To add to the mystery, this specimen,
which was nearer to Neanderthal specifications, had been killed by a firearm.

The Belgian professor's analysis
after having examined it through the glass carries value in view of his
reputation in the fields of anthropological and allied sciences: He said:

"The specimen at first sight
is representative of man or preferably, the description at the first stage
could be an adult human of masculine sex. Height 1 metre 80 centimetres
(5.9 ft). Of fairly normal proportions, but excessively hairy. Except
for the face, the palms of the hands, soles of the feet, the penis and
testicles, the creature is entirely covered with very dark brown hair,
of seven to ten centimetres long. His skin is of the wax-like color characteristic
of corpses of men of white race when not tanned by the sun.

"This is detectable over
the whole body, more particularly outside the frankly hairless zones,
such as the chest center, and the knees. Hairs were more separated on
other body parts. Altogether, the hair situation reminds one of a chimpanzee's
fur and not for instance, the dense fur of a bear.

"The damage to the occiput
[back of the head], and the fact that the eyeballs had been ejected from
their sockets, one having completely disappeared, suggests that the creature
had been shot in the face by several large-caliber bullets. One bullet
must have penetrated the cubitus [forearm] when he tried to protect himself.
A second bullet pierced the right eye, destroying it, and causing the
other to start out of its cavity. This caused the much larger cavity at
the back of the cranium, producing immediate death."

Hansen had shown the Iceman at
fairgrounds since the third of May 1967. As the specimen was decomposing
in parts, he had intended showing it for only one more year before authorizing
an autopsy. This is a peculiar report in view of the first Iceman news
suggesting that there might be suspicion of foul play, and that the authorities
might in any case wish to examine the mystery. If this occurred, it would
take place with or without permission of the man in charge.

Immediately Hansen's plan was
known, Heuvelmans and Sanderson proposed to purchase the specimen. Negotiations
were in progress when the new sensation of the Iceman vanishing frustrated
their aims.

Reports of the curious story
increased in several countries. One foreign report gave a variation of
the ice block's world travels that it had been sold to an unknown party
who had removed it to an unknown destination. Yet another version of previous
reports.

All that remained was the evidence
of Heuvelmans and Sanderson, arrived at on the spot, their photographs
of the Iceman in his cold prison, and his reconstructed image drawn by
Heuvelmans.

I believe my first report of
the Iceman disappearing is the correct solution. Everything points to
the purchaser being none other than the original owner himself.

Bernard Heuvelmans consulted
Jack Arthur Ullrich of Westport, New Jersey, who is a geological specialist,
a hydrologist, and glaciologist. Their conversation, according to the
best of my inquiries on this complicated Snowman-homin related case, circled
mostly on ice conditions relating to preservation. Asked how long he thought
the specimen could have been preserved in natural ice, Ullrich said that
the rapidity with which decomposition set in would depend on the current
temperature.

Temperature can be lowered artificially,
so that all putrefaction is practically arrested, but such intense cold
is nonexistent on our planet. No animal such as a mammoth or any other
prehistoric beast has ever been preserved naturally in ice. In Siberia,
mammoths and woolly rhinocerii have been discovered in muddy swamp terrain.
But this might be due to formation of tannic acid, which has the tendency
to preserve from corruption. The temperature alone of natural ice can
only retard the process of decay, but cannot prevent it eventually.

Opinion now was that the age
of the Iceman specimen was only a few years.

Was the creature's present state
the result of a natural accident after immersion in an icy sea, or was
it refrigerated artificially after it had been dredged out? Ullrich thought
that natural ice preservation in this case was extremely unlikely. For
this to have occurred the corpse would have had to sink in the water without
dropping immediately to the bottom of the sea bed, and for the water to
congeal while enveloping the body, before the body was devoured by predators
or decomposed by bacteria. A body thus congealing would accumulate over
its whole surface a film of irregular ice layers. The present specimen
being encased in very clear ice could not have become congealed in the
sea, but was later refrigerated artificially.

Here was no fossil either. Mr.
Ullrich's conjectures on the specimen's nature when alive discounted the
proposition that Bozo was an ape-man conserved in natural ice down the
ages. He suggested, as previously propounded, that it might have been
a human individual, abnormal perhaps, but of our own species.

Could there be a connotation
there after all with the Hairy Ainu, the specimen being a lost representative
of that fast-disappearing but known race? On the other hand, does he indicate
simply a "phony", a manufactured model, a composite thing, though
this seems almost physically impossible.

To all questions, Bernard Heuvelmans'
views seem rational enough, and others share them; that there might still
be Neanderthal men, more ancient than all men, that live among us.

And one such Neanderthal man
had been killed by shots from a gun, and at close range, It is possible
that Heuvelmans' and Sanderson's current investigations have major interest,
Somewhere on earth men-relics from the Neanderthal Age still exist, Somewhere
these men coexist with ordinary human beings, one of whom either out of
panic or sheer destructive instinct used a firearm. Somewhere? But where?

The northern Japanese Islands
have been well scoured for one of the answers to such mysteries. In China
there remain mysteries of unusual living beings in remote areas. But China
would never have allowed a rare specimen like the Iceman to leave her
territory knowingly.

Heuvelmans considers that if
the creature that is still causing controversy in certain science circles
in America was truthfully found floating in a block of ice in the Bering
Straits or Sea, one must study any hypotheses on its origin. In addition
to the remotely possible Ainu idea, it could have lived in British Columbia,
in other far wilds of Northern Canada, in Alaska, or even in the back
blocks of the United States. Hairy men have been reported from many parts
of the world where a civilization has not yet encroached. Russia is another
and important example. Doctor Boris Porshnev, the well-known Russian historian
and scientist, has for years studied cases of small-lost groups in the
Caucasus and Siberia.

The venerable Professor Rinchen
of Mongolia has been studying the question of hominid-remnants for a lifetime.

Certain discoveries are bound
to upset both proved and preconceived facts of knowledge; all that we
believe we know.

Bernard Heuvelmans has said that
this question might resolve into being the most important discovery of
our times.

One must remember the timidity
of many scientific experts. From a French viewpoint the question of mysterious,
non-recognized creatures receives a cold reception in British scientific
circles. But I do not think this is entirely true. Great caution does
exist before a final commitment, but that is not exclusive to the official
British attitude. This book will show how timidly, and often with hostility,
other countries' "establishments" reacted for far longer than
a mere one hundred years.

In my introduction I said how
my work resolves into a wrestling match. Here are two bouts that must
be added to this chapter, which came to light when the whole material
was already in process of preparing for publication.

Professor Bernard Heuvelmans'
conversations with Frank Hansen were now amplified. He met him again at
Hansen's home in Rollingstone, Winona County, Minnesota, where Hansen
repeated statements he had made, but now said he had no idea of the Iceman's
nature. He said it was even possible that the specimen was only a clever
oriental fabrication, like so-called mermaids sold in the main ports of
the Indian Ocean as curiosities. They are generally the product of a very
complicated assembly of a monkey's body or a lemur's, a fish tail, and
the claws of a predatory bird. This last physical trait has never been
attributed to the mermaid's legendary image. Probably the idea is to create
something sensational. It could well be that whoever first saw the disputed
ice specimen was looking for artificial "Monster" exhibits to
commercialize in the U.S.A.

Perhaps the fact of Hansen now
casting doubts on the macabre contents of his showcase having ever been
genuine is an opting out of responsibility because he may think a showdown
is inevitable. Such an assumption seems reasonable, especially as a slight
scent of decay was beginning to escape from one corner of the coffin,
even though it was closed. And one of the toes showed a change of color
which Hansen himself admitted having noticed. He stated that he could
continue showing the specimen for another year, but feared such a delay
would cause decay beyond the point when a scientific study in depth could
be applied.

Professor Heuvelmans pursued
the case with several hypotheses. Firstly, he said the object could have
been entirely artificial. But this he rejected as impossible. Next, it
could be a composite assembly of spare parts taken from divers species.
That too he rejected. Thirdly, it could be an individual belonging to
some known race of Homo sapiens. There was doubt there too. Fourthly,
it might be an abnormal human freak. The fifth suggestion was that the
Iceman was of a race, or sub-race, of Man still unknown. The sixth hypothesis
indicated an entirely different species of Man. Heuvelmans suggested that
the theory of a specimen of an unknown race of Man was just possible.
All races have thrown up freakishly hairy samples from time to time.

At this point the Professor quoted
the American anthropologist, Carleton Coon. Apparently this scientist's
book, Origin of Races (published in 1912), describes the Ainus "as hirsute as a hairy Scot or Jew". I cannot quite see why
those two particular races were picked out as displaying extreme hairiness.
Professor Heuvelmans, speaking in all seriousness, stated that the Iceman
was much, much more hirsute! Still, there have been exceptionally hairy
human beings known to medical history down the centuries. Such records
appear in Les Velus ("The Hirsute Ones") a book written
in 1912 by Doctors Le Double and Houssay.

With due respect to Professor
Heuvelmans, the Iceman hypothesis of a fabricated specimen, which he rejected,
is the one I have always been inclined to favour since the beginning of
this strange story of a creature dredged up from ice.

The following final piece of
information to reach me almost confirms my view.

Like many investigators, I play
my hunches. One of these, some months ago, was that some Vancouver records
would contain a clue to the mystery; so I wrote to find out. After some
weeks, only a few days after receiving the amplified Heuvelmans data,
I received a report from Mr. J. N. Lewis, of the Press Library, Vancouver.
He had just discovered the clue, and it had appeared in the Vancouver
Sun Newspaper on May l0, 1969. The implication was that the Iceman
was a fake. That same month, the Smithsonian Institution of U.S.A. indicated
that the specimen being exhibited up and down the United States was an
artificial shape composed of latex rubber and hair.

George Berklacy of the Smithsonian
stated that he had been in touch with a Californian wax museum owner who
told him that one of his employees had worked on the Iceman in the spring
of 1967 inserting hair into the latex rubber body. This tallies with the
time Frank Hansen began showing his "prehistoric" specimen at
fair grounds. The museum owner would not disclose the name of the man
who had performed the exhausting task of covering the shape with millions
of hairs. The indication of decay escaping from the Iceman's glass case
does not constitute a contradiction. A non-human substance like rubber
can be equally objectionable when deteriorating.

Dr. John Napier, was at the time,
chief of the primatology department at the Smithsonian, and eminent in
his field, but was curious. Frank Hansen refused to let him examine the
exhibit closely, just as he had refused others.

Dr. Napier said that the chances
now seem high that the Iceman was merely a fabricated model. But he is
still interested and wishes he could have examined it. He added that it
was difficult to believe that Heuvelmans could have been fooled so easily.

Though now it is practically
certain that the Iceman is a piece of trickery, if one is bound to agree
with John Napier.

And that is why this story of
a probable hoax. Because, supposing there was one fragment of truth in
this involved and often absurd story, some of its features do equate with
this book's theme of the Snowman-plus-Neanderthal situation. And because
if the Iceman is a complete hoax, as I am almost certain it is, fabrications
of this nature must be exposed to prevent their perpetuation.

Finally, a closing statement.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Washington, D.C. have been good enough to advise me that they have no
information to send me regarding the "Iceman." Quote: "Nor
has this Bureau taken any part in investigation in connection with this
case." Unquote. The letter is written at the highest level, and the
signature represents a living and legendary name.

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